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barely formed in any way. But she knew if she could see him clearly that there
would be intensity in his expression.
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"Why is this so important to you?"
For many minutes he did not speak, while she waited without understanding.
Then, finally, he said, "Please let me do this thing for you. I want ... very
much ... for you to have the good things again."
"But, why?"
He tried to explain, but it was not a matter of explanations. It was a matter
of pains and joys remembered. Of being lonely and finding pleasure in motion
pictures. Of having no directions and finding a future in what had always been
a hobby. Of having lusted for success and coming at last to it with the
knowledge that movies had given him everything, and she had been part of it.
There was no totally rational explanation that Arthur Crewes could codify for
her. He had struggled upward and she had given him a hand. It had been a
small, a tiny, a quickly forgotten little favor-
-if he told her now she would not remember it, nor would she think it was at
all comparable to what he was trying to do for her. But as the years had hung
themselves on Arthur Crewes's past, the tiny favor had grown out of all
proportion in his mind, and now he was trying desperately to pay Valerie Lone
back.
All this, in a moment of silence.
He had been in the arena too long. He could not speak to her of these nameless
wondrous things, and hope to win her from her fears. But even in his silence
there was clarity. She reached out to touch his face.
"I'll try," she said.
And when they were outside on the flat, dry plain across which Kencannon
started toward them, she turned to Arthur Crewes and she said, with a rough
touch of the wiseacre that had been her trademark eighteen years before, "But
I still ain't playin' none of your damn scenes in the noood, buster."
It was difficult, but Crewes managed a smile.
HANDY
Meanwhile, back at my head, things were going from Erich von Stroheim to
Alfred Hitchcock. No, make that from Fritz Lang to Val Lewton. Try bad to
worse.
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I'd come back from Never-Never Land and the song of the turtle, and had called
in to Arthur's office. I simply could not face a return to the world of show
biz so soon after polishing tombstones in Emery Romito's private cemetery. I
needed a long pull on something called quiet, and it was not to be found at
the studio.
My apartment was hot and stuffy. I stripped and took a shower. For a moment I
considered flushing my clothes down the toilet: I was sure they were
impregnated with the mold of the ages, fresh from
Santa Monica.
Then I chivvied and worried the thought that maybe possibly I ought just to
send myself out to
Filoy Cleaners, in toto. "Here you go, Phil," I'd say. "I'd like myself
cleaned and burned." You need sleep, Handy, I thought. Maybe about seven
hundred years' worth.
Rip Van Winkle, old Ripper-poo, it occurred to me, in a passing flash of
genuine lunacy, knew precisely where it was at. I could see it now, a Broadway
extravaganza
RIP!
starring Fred Handy who will sleep like a mother stone log for seven hundred
years right before your perspiring eyes, at $2.25 / $4.25 / and $6.25 for
Center Aisle Orchestra Seats.
The shower did little to restore my sanity.
I decided to call Julie.
I checked her itinerary--which I'd blackmailed out of her agent--and found
that Hello, Dolly! was playing Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I dialed the O-lady
and told her all kindsa stuff. After a while she got into conversations with
various kindly folks in the state of Pennsylvania, who confided in her,
strictly entre-nous, that my Lady of the moist thighs, the fair Julie Glynn,
née Rowena
Glyckmeier, was out onna town somewheres, and O-lady 212 in Hollywood would
stay right there tippy-
tap up against the phone all night if need be, just to bring us two fine
examples of Young
American Love together, whenever.
As I racked the receiver, just as suddenly as I'd gotten into the mood, all
good humor and fancy footwork deserted me. I realized I was sadder than I'd
been in years. What the hell was happening?
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